Acer’s $199 Chromebook lowers the Chrome OS barrier to entry

Acer undercuts Samsung by $50, sacrifices battery life to get there.

The prices for Chromebooks continue to come down: while Samsung went with an ARM-based processor to lower the cost of its $249 Chromebook, Google has just announced that Acer's new C7 Chromebook will be available starting November 13th for the even lower price of $199. The new model will be sold aside Samsung's $249 ARM Chromebook, $449 Chromebook 550, and $329 Chromebox.

This new Chromebook manages to pack in a 1.1GHz dual-core Intel Celeron 847 processor, a Sandy Bridge-based chip that's just a little slower than the 1.3GHz Celeron 867 chip used in the $449 Samsung Chromebook 550 introduced earlier this year. For most tasks, it should still handily beat the Exynos 5 chip in the ARM Chromebook and the Intel Atom chips in previous-generation Chromebooks, and its GPU is capable of decoding 1080p video.

The C7 also offers a healthy selection of ports and extras for the price: it features three USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet jack, VGA and HDMI outputs, a webcam, and a headphone jack, though it excludes the SD card reader present in the other Chromebooks. It sports 2GB of DDR3 RAM and also comes with the same two-year, 100GB subscription to Google Drive that the ARM Chromebook includes, which would run you about $120 if you paid the standard monthly rate.

The newest Chromebook does cut some corners to reach this price point, however: it uses a 320GB spinning hard drive rather than solid-state storage; it weighs three pounds (up from the ARM Chromebook's 2.42 pounds); it includes 802.11n Wi-Fi but excludes any kind of Bluetooth connectivity; and it's rated for just 3.5 hours of battery life, down from the over six hours promised by both of Samsung's Chromebooks. Its Intel processor also needs a cooling fan, something that the ARM Chromebook is able to get by without.

If you want to dip your toe into the Chrome OS waters while spending the least amount of money possible, the C7 Chromebook looks like the best way to do it. Just be aware that such low prices usually come at the cost of features and build quality.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.